'Health Courts' Critic to be Featured Speaker at Wyoming Patient Sa...( Co-Author of New Report Medical I...),Health

Co-Author of New Report, Medical Injustice, Will Challenge Corporate-Backed Proponents of "Health Courts"

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Case Western University professor Dale Nance, co-author of the groundbreaking new report on health courts, Medical Injustice, will be one of the featured speakers at a patient safety forum in Cheyenne, Wyoming on Monday, October 15. The forum will debate the merits and weaknesses of the health courts concept.

Mr. Nance's report, written with fellow professor Max Mehlman under a grant from the American Association for Justice Robert L. Habush Endowment, found that health courts would require the creation of new and costly bureaucracies that would be controlled at every level by the insurance industry.

For more information, see the full Executive Summary at http://www.atla.org/pressroom/PressReleases/ExecutiveSummary.pdf .

View the Health Courts fact sheet at http://www.atla.org/pressroom/PressReleases/HealthCourts.doc.

The report found many critical flaws in the health courts concept,

including:

-- The new health courts bureaucracies would place a massive financial

burden on taxpayers and the employers and employees that pay for

health care insurance.

-- The decision making process would be controlled at every stage by the

insurance industry.

-- A health courts bureaucracy would not be affordable without

substantial increases in doctors' malpractice premiums.

-- Patients would be forced into the bureaucracies without any choice,

and many claims would be arbitrarily limited or barred altogether.

-- Patients would have to prove the "avoidability" of their injuries and

even those successful in their claim w
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